Stefan Hakenberg

Stefan HAKENBERG‘s work includes a wide variety of musical media. The integration of players of non western classical backgrounds has particularly shaped his creative output. Hakenberg served as the director of the Public Music School Division of the Darmstadt Academy for Musical Arts. He now resides in Graz, Austria and is the artistic director of Young Composers and Gustav Mahler at the Gustav Mahler Research Center in Toblach/Dobbiaco, Italy, where he creates, curates, and directs opportunities for young composers.

Amongst the presenters of his music are: "ALEA III", "Dinosaur Annex", "BMOP", and "Arcadian Winds" from Boston, the "Cube" ensemble from Chicago, the "Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra Chamber Ensemble", "Trio BlattArt" from Frankfurt, the "El Cimarrón Ensemble" and "lagrimosa beltà" from Salzburg, "IIIZ+", "Sagye" from Seoul, "re-sound" from Melbourne, "Ensemble Phorminx" from Darmstadt, "The New Millennium Ensemble" from New York, the "Bangkok Saxophone Quartet", "Duo Contemporain" from Rotterdam, "UnitedBerlin", "AsianArt Ensemble", "sonic.art Saxophone Quartet" from Berlin, "Duo Stump-Linshalm" from Vienna; the jazz band "Common Ground" (Matthias Akeo Nowak, Sebastian Gille, Achim Kaufmann, Bill Elgart), the "BundesJazzOrchester", the "Gürzenich Orchester der Stadt Köln", the "Heidelberger Sinfoniker", "Jugendzupforchester of NRW", and the "Landesjugendorchester NRW".
His works have been performed by conductors such as Stewart EMERSON, Clemens HEIL, Annika HINSCHE, Vladimir JUROWSKI, Thomas KALB, Jeffrey MILARSKY, Roger NELSON, Richard PITTMAN, Morris ROSENZWEIG, Carl ROSMAN, Peter SELWYN, Johannes STERT, Markus STENZ, George TSONTAKIS, Timothy WEISS, Stephan WINCKLER, and Thomas WISE;
and soloists like Frauke AULBERT, Matthias BAUER, Claudia BUDER, Phoebe CARRAI, CHUNG Il-Ryun, DAI Xiaolian, GOTO Makiko, Camilla HOITENGA, Nicholas ISHERWOOD, JI Aeri, KIM Woongsik, Rainer Maria KLAAS, Marco LIENHARD, Dan LIPPEL, Dimitris MARINOS, MEI Han, Julia MIHÁLY, Marlene MILD, Stefanie MIRWALD, Heather O'DONNELL, Frances PAPPAS, SAITOH Tetsu, Robert SCHULZ, Jeremias SCHWARZER, Michaela SELINGER, Janet UNDERHILL, Michael VEIT, Tara VENDITTI, WANG Changyuan, Amelia WATKINS, Laura YOUNG, and Martin ZEHN, amongst many others.
Hakenberg‘s work has been featured in portrait concerts by the Folkwang Music School in Essen, Germany, by Greenwich House Arts in New York City, by the Academy for Musical Arts in Darmstadt, Germany, and in a weekend focussing on his music presented by Landesmusikrat NRW and European Capital of Culture Ruhr.2010 in Witten, Germany.

Films by Theo LIPFERT with scores by Stefan Hakenberg, Solving for X, The Displacement Map, and Taubman Sucks, won awards at festivals in Portland, Oregon, Kansas City, and Honolulu, and three screenings at the Tribeca Film Festival among many more locations and festivals. Films with his music can be seen regularly on U.S. television channels and in the film From the Mekong to Montana, which was screened at the Park City Film Music Festival 2012. In 2007 HAKENBERG was credited with having written the first "climate opera" with his chamber work "The Egg Musher," libretto by Michael KERSTAN, on the topic of global warming. His dance opera "Schau nicht zurück, Orfeo!" (libretto: Patricia Anne SIMPSON) was premiered in 2010 at the International Gluck Opera Festival in Nuremberg, Germany. His last opera "The Amputation of Charlie Sharp" (libretto: Philip GOUREVITCH) was premiered in 2014 at the festival "NOW!" in Essen, Germany.

Hakenberg attended the university conservatories of Düsseldorf and Cologne where he studied composition with Hans Werner HENZE. He earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University where he studied with Bernard RANDS and Mario DAVIDOVSKY. Other grants and fellowships brought him to the summer festivals in Tanglewood (where he studied with Oliver KNUSSEN on a Leonard Bernstein Fellowship), Aspen (where he studied with John HARBISON), and Fontainebleau (where he studied with Betsy JOLAS), and to artist colonies such as "The MacDowell Colony" in New Hampshire, "Yaddo" in Saratoga Springs, New York, and the "Atelierhaus Worpswede" in Lower Saxony. The Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, MeetTheComposer, the Alaska State Council on the Arts, various Alaskan arts and humanities councils, the State Music Council of North-Rhine Westphalia, the Endowments for the Arts in North-Rhine Westphalia and Lower Saxony, and the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton have directly sponsored him and commissioned his works.

Hakenberg has followed invitations to present lectures about his own music and give masterclasses at universities around the world such as the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Conservatory in Istanbul, Turkey, MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, Germany, Melbourne Conservatory of Music and Monash University in Melbourne, Victoria, or the Conservatory of Music "Francesco Antonio Bonporti" in Trento, Italy.

HAKENBERG's music is published by AUGEMUS Musikverlag, Bochum, Germany. Recordings are available on Bridging Arts Records, Salzburg, Austria, Capstone Records, Brooklyn, New York, and VDM Records, Rome, Italy, and on the Internet.